


Meet Me In The Woods

by saccharomyces_cerevisibae



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Fae AU, Mild Suicidal Ideation, POV Rose Lalonde, POV Second Person, magic nonsense, theres gonna be sex later but ill mark it if you wanna skip it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 02:00:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14684093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saccharomyces_cerevisibae/pseuds/saccharomyces_cerevisibae
Summary: The evening of your twentieth birthday you spend listening to the music coming from the woods.It's the same music that everyone hears beginning on their twentieth birthday, and it's been luring humans into the Fae riddled woods for as long as anyone can remember, never to return.You want to look for your mother.





	1. Strange Trails

The evening of your twentieth birthday you spend listening to the music coming from the woods. 

It had come on slowly at sunset- growing in volume as darkness fell to expose the starry night sky- until the music was swelling around you, drums overlaid with chords and voices, ethereal and heartbreakingly beautiful. The others in the village tell you that it’s just as captivating the first time you hear it as the last, and it’s not hard to believe them.

You wonder when it’ll stop for you. Some hear the music once, the night they come of age, and never again. Others hear it all their lives, a maddening nightly call to the forest. Those instances are rarer, but it’s possible for you. You know your mother heard it as long as you knew her, until she couldn’t take it anymore and disappeared into the darkness of the woods. 

As you sit listening in the doorway of your house, Dave comes to sit next to you. He hands you a steaming cup of tea, herbs sweetened with a little honey, and sips at his own. You exist in companionable quiet for some time, just soaking in the sounds of the night together- your first time hearing the music, and his second. 

He breaks the silence between the two of you. “What do you think happened to her?”

You make a noncommittal noise. You really don’t know what the Fae do with humans who follow the music into the woods, but you know that the humans never come back. You try not to think about it.

Dave keeps talking. “Do you think she’s dead? I mean, shit, we never did find a body, but those woods are fuck-off big. And there aren’t really any stories about the Fae being exactly  _ nice _ to intruders, you know?”

“There’s no indication that anybody who ever followed the music actually  _ found _ the Fae,” you say bitterly, “As you put it, these woods are ‘fuck-off big’. Who’s to say that she didn’t just get lost, and she never found her way back? That she succumbed to hunger and thirst, or whatever lives in its godawful depths? It was stupid of us to even try looking for her, all those years ago.” You stare at the ground, remembering the pitying looks that the others in town had given you when you and Dave had tried to organize a search party. 

The silence builds, and once again Dave breaks it. His voice is gentler than you’ve heard it in a while. “It was even stupider of her to go, Rose. It’s not our fault that we couldn’t get her back.”

You blink back tears and stay quiet, simply listening to the sound that lured your mother away from the two of you all those years ago. It’s beautiful. It’s entrancing and heart wrenching and mystifying, and you’re ashamed to say that you want to follow it, too.

You try not to think about it.

* * *

 

You do think about it. Every afternoon you hope and hope that yesterday was your last day, and every evening as the sun kisses the horizon your hopes are dashed. You nail bits of iron to your house, a pair of scissors opened and menacing over the front entryway and a chain of scrap metal forming a makeshift wind chime outside your bedroom window. You stop cleaning the kitchen, let the natural untidiness of your home reach record levels, and none of it helps. The Fae may not be able to come in, but the music swells unimpeded from the forest, clouding around your head like your fogged breath in the frigid winter air, inescapable. 

Dave still hears it, too. You know because you catch him lingering at the edge of the forest sometimes, half-focused on the world around him. Sometimes in daylight, he hums whatever tune you’d heard the night before, absentmindedly interspersing it with his own words and drum beats until he realizes what he’s doing and stops.

He knows that you still hear it, but he doesn’t bring it up- bring  _ her _ up- again. You think that he might be afraid to. It’s a sore subject for both of you, after all, and not one you’ve really talked much about the past few years. Still, it’s  _ there _ , and you can’t avoid talking about it forever.

* * *

 

You last through the winter, and the thaw that follows. The woods are no longer barren and deathly silent at night save for the call of the Fae; now there are frogs and crickets, owls and the faint tricklings of a nearby stream. The nights are warmer and shorter. Still, you hear the music, carried in on a breeze that smells like the rich, damp earth.

You catch Dave listening one night, sitting on the wooden steps to your house with his head inclined ever so slightly towards the forest. He looks thoughtful, almost troubled.

“It’s louder tonight,” you offer.

Dave listens a moment before replying. “The solstice is next week. Veil’s thin as shit right now.”

“The solstice,” you repeat. Dave doesn’t look as you sit next to him. “It’ll be seven years since she left, then.” 

You hear him take a deep breath. He’s silent for a beat before speaking. “You think she ever heard it this loud? Like it is now?”

You nod once, barely dipping your chin down before bringing it back up. “I think she kept herself from it for as long as she could, for our sakes.” The two of you stare out into the woods as you speak. “I think she stayed here until she couldn’t take it anymore.”

Dave laughs, a bitter sound. “I think I get it now. For the longest time, I blamed her for leaving, but I fuckin’ get it now.” You can see him looking at you out of the corners of his eyes, like he expects you to be angry with him.

“Me too,” you say. The music rises and falls, an unknown and unseen voice reaching a high note that echoes around you and raises the hair on your arms, resonating through the air. You close your eyes and let it wash over you, almost meditative in the experience. When you open them, Dave is turned to look at you.

“Would you ever-” he begins, and stops short. He licks his lips, turns away, and tries again. “Would you ever want to go after it? Disappear off into the wild fuckin’ yonder, follow in her footsteps and finally solve one of life’s big mysteries?”

You reply without thinking, surprising even yourself. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it would be good, to find out. I want to know what’s out there. And I want to know what happened to her.”

“Me too,” Dave says, and it hangs in the air between you. It feels like something shameful and taboo has been released in admitting your curiosity.

* * *

 

The two of you talk again the next night, and the next. The solstice is almost upon you, and the music is so loud at night that you can hardly sleep. When you do it’s fitful, and your dreams are full of ancient mossy trees in the mist, the promise of arcane knowledge hidden deep within. Sometimes you dream you see your mother, smiling at you from just out of reach. You chase and chase after her, and in the end she disappears all the same. No matter what, when you wake your chest aches, confused and homesick and so fucking  _ wistful _ for something you’ve never even known.

It gets worse as the solstice approaches and the exhaustion builds. You and Dave both have heavy bags under your eyes, and at night when you can’t sleep the two of you sit out on the front step and listen together. There’s an unspoken but ever present longing to just pick up and  _ go _ , and it’s taking its toll on the both of you.

The night before the solstice, you break and spend an hour or so crying into Dave’s shoulder while he comforts you in the quiet, awkward way that siblings do when parents aren’t present. You’ve both gotten good at that over the years. 

Once you’ve quieted down, between hiccupped breaths you tell him that you want to go tomorrow. You don’t know what’ll happen to you if you do, but you can’t live like this anymore. You need to understand what’s been calling to you so strongly, what’s stolen your peace and your sleep and your mother away from you. 

You expect him to be angry that you’d leave him like that, after all that you’ve gone through together, but he says that he understands and that he. 

He.

He doesn’t want you to go alone. 

He gets it and he’s been wanting to go, and he doesn’t want you to go searching alone. If you’re going to find what’s become of your mother, he wants to be there, too. 

You talk a while longer, about the logistics of leaving your village. Should you lock up the house, or leave it to someone? Do you think you’ll actually be coming back? Would bringing charms of iron and rowan protect you from the Fae, or make them harder to find? Do you need food?

As dawn breaks, the music ends, and you and Dave finally go to bed. In the afternoon, you wake, and begin planning your leave. You consult the huge book that’s belonged to your family for generations- you haven’t touched it in years. A thick layer of dust smears off the cover and onto your fingers when you handle it. It might be your imagination but you swear you can smell your mother on the pages, the floral woodsy scent she used to have after long walks in the forest.

As Dave shoves around the built up junk from your weeks-long bout of not cleaning, you call to him what supplies you think you should take- bread, dried fruit, and nuts to eat; skins of water to drink; a small pot of butter and polished bits of crystal for gifts; an iron nail apiece for protection. Other things you don’t have on hand and have to make or find. You spend the better part of an hour trudging around a nearby stream with Dave, meticulously picking through the rocks. It’s worth it when you return home each bearing a small rock with a water-worn hole in the middle.  

As night falls, you split everything between two bags and heft them onto your shoulders. You’ve locked up the house and left notes in case anyone comes looking. You don’t think that the rest of the village will for a few weeks, really- you and Dave had always kept to yourselves, even more so after your mother left. It might take a while for anyone to notice you’re gone.

For what may be the last time, you sit on the steps of your house together and watch the last of the light fade from the sky in orange and red streaks. As the stars fade in the heat of the day breaks. The air fills with fireflies, blinking gently as they drift around each other. In the distance, the music starts again. 

Wordlessly you stand, beginning your trek into the woods, and Dave follows. 

In the beginning, you can follow the well-worn paths that have been in the woods for generations, but those only go so deep into the trees; too soon, you’ve strayed from the path, and it’s a chore not to trip over tree roots. The music gets louder as you chase it, wordless ethereal singing accompanied by drums and tones. 

After what feels like an hour of stumbling together in the dark, Dave stops in front of you. When you catch up, you can see why. Fifty feet ahead, the air shimmers and waves like it’s heated by a fire. Beyond, you can see the trees grow taller, their trunks wider and greener and mossier, everything just a little bit  _ more _ than it should be. Delicate flowers and mushrooms seem to glow from around their trunks, almost obscenely lush. A thin mist hangs in the air, making it hard to see very far.

People try not to go near the Veil, if they can help it. 

You slow your pace, cautiously approaching the Veil like you would a wild animal. When it’s within reach you stretch your arm out to skim your fingers along its edge. It feels freezing hot, tingly and intense, like pure magic. The energy seems to flow from your fingertips through your entire body, and you shiver in anticipation.

Beside you, you can see Dave doing the same, playing with the sensation of the Veil. His brows are furrowed in concentration as he examines it, all the while quietly muttering to himself. You can’t hear what he’s saying through the music that fills the air like a physical force, almost as if it’s trying to drag you the remaining steps forward.

You turn to Dave, face set, and hold out your hand. He nods and takes it, and together you step through the Veil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lookie here at my first attempt at a multichapter Thing since the first fanfiction i ever wrote back on ole ffn.net :D comments are greatly appreciated because i fucking thrive on attention. No idea what the update schedule will be like but i'm in summer break rn so i actually have time to write?? if i can wrangle up some motivation.


	2. Way Out There

As you and Dave make your way through the Fae forest, things get... strange. 

At first it seems like the woods you’re used to, albeit larger, greener. You’ve been walking all night, and the music has died down; you’re beginning to hear birdsong instead. It’s not like anything you’re used to- the notes are longer, more drawn out, more melodious. It’s almost like listening to a flute try to mimic a birdsong, just a little  _ too _ perfect,  _ too _ human in its complexity. You swear you can hear whispering in between the calls,  _ lost _ and  _ human _ and, disturbingly,  _ fresh meat _ .

The ground seems to be getting more uneven, until you realize that you can see slithering movement on the forest floor in your peripherals, tree roots twisting and winding around your moving feet in an apparent attempt to trip you. They still when you look directly at them, but the corners of your eyes pick up a constant shifting. You tread more carefully, nudging Dave’s elbow so that you can signal him to do the same. 

In the distance, the air continues to mist and shimmer, not unlike how the Veil appeared to you. You never reach it; it seems that it’s just a quality of the air here, and it makes everything dizzy and hazy, a little too bright and saturated in the light of the rising sun. You feel almost as though you’re in a dream, detached from reality with your feet taking you ever forward without really thinking about that. You squint at the gaps between distant trees- the lush, dense foliage provides excellent cover for anything lurking, but every so often you think you can see large shadows moving in the distance, trailing after you.

You’re accustomed to seeing mushrooms on the damp forest floor, but never as large as they are here; they must be up to your waist at least, vivid reds and oranges with yellow spots and diameters wider than your arm span. Their stems sprout up around the gigantic tree trunks, giving the illusion that you’ve shrunk down to palm-sized. They look tantalizingly perfect to sit on, but you’re not foolish enough to so much as approach them; you recognize a dangerous proposition when you see one, even when it’s nonverbal.

Though it must be morning by now, it grows darker as you go on, gigantic trees and winding plants blocking out any possibility of sunlight. The roots of the trees have grown so much bigger that you need to pick your way around some of them, else you’re stuck trying to scale a rounded wall of damp mossy bark that extends taller than either you or Dave. A few times you do, tightening the straps of your bags and fitting your hands and feet into the deeply creviced bark. You pause at the top of each one, looking around- trees, still, in every direction, no indication of where to find the Fae.

A sudden damp breeze has you shivering, and you realize all of the sudden that the temperature is dropping. A large, dark bird takes flight from behind, and a startled foggy breath punches out of you as you realize that it has two sets of gleaming pink eyes and mangled human hands for feet. It lands on the chest-height tree root directly in front of you and lets out a hoarse cry, deep yet vaguely human, and inclines its head toward you in an apparent greeting.

You exchange a silent look with Dave, and after a moment he flicks his eyes back to the raven. It seems impatient, digging its dirty and jagged fingernails into the crevices of the tree. They must be sharper than human nails despite their appearance- little chunks of bark crumble down as it tightens its grip. It could probably do a lot of damage. You really,  _ really _ would rather not piss it off.

After another exchanged glance, you and Dave incline your heads back to the bird. It opens its beak, wicked needle-sharp teeth glinting in the low light, and bids you  _ follow _ . Its voice is raspy and hoarse, more a nightmarish parody of what humans should sound like than a faithful imitation, but you make out the instruction all the same. 

You’d rather not follow it into the darkness, but as it turns around and readies to take off again, it looks back over its wing to make sure you and Dave are going to come along. You’re not sure its request is something to refuse. You have the feeling that whether you wanted to or not, you and Dave would both end up wherever it wanted you; your cooperation would only ensure you make it there in one piece.

The bird takes flight, launching itself from its perch on the oversized root and hefting itself away through the trees. It doesn’t seem intent on making it easy for you and Dave to follow; several times you lose sight of it, having to guess its direction is the same, or listen for the heavy flapping of wings. The two of you hurry along in the meantime and do your best not to trip over the smaller every-winding snarls of roots at your feet.

After a while, you arrive in a clearing. The surrounding trees are enormous, bigger than you’ve ever seen; the trunks are massive, wider than some houses you’ve seen, and the first branches are so far up that you make yourself dizzy craning your neck up at the height. Between the massive trees are ferns and mushrooms, still oversized but not nearly as much as the trees. The ground is mainly dark, damp soil, soft and rich feeling with occasional patches of moss grown up in soft, tempting patches that look perfect for a nap. You can feel yourself being drawn to them,  _ just a quick lie down _ , and you force yourself to look away.

The bird flies up, high overhead, and perches in a branch so far away that you have trouble making it out. You assume this is your cue to stay, so you do, pointedly not sitting anywhere and keeping an eye out for anything coming your way.

You see Dave doing the same, and you wait.

In your pocket you fiddle with your various protections, the iron nail, butter, and crystal. You’re not sure which you should be prepared to have out, so you keep ready to grab any of them at a moment’s notice. In front of you Dave paces, worrying a circle into the dirt of the forest floor. Neither of you had been expecting to be kept waiting; you’d been more preoccupied with the idea of the Fae snatching you up the second you stepped foot across the Veil.

You’re not sure, but you think it’s late afternoon when something shifts. A sudden drop in temperature has you shivering, your breath fogging around your head and sticking there to cloud your vision. You try to pull your nail from your pocket but realize that your body is frozen in place, unable to move, unable to blink. 

Out of the corners of your eyes, you can sense a slithering along the forest floor, roots winding and twisting around one another, coming at you in a writhing mass. They reach your boots and spiral upwards around your legs, squeezing harshly and growing fast. You can see Dave, frozen mid-step, eyes wide with surprise and fear as he is enveloped waist-deep as well.

Through the building mist you can see a shape coming at you. It seems immense, and you can sense movement from within the silhouette as it approaches until it’s right in front of you and it’s-

Fuck.

It’s one of the Fae, it  _ has _ to be, there’s no other explanation. At the forefront of the mass is a body, long and slender, bigger than any human you’ve ever seen by half. It’s humanoid, draped in what looks like layers upon layers of black gauzy material as an intricate robe. The face is long, thin, all sharp angles with obscenely pink lips and long lashes. The legs, you realize, aren’t touching the ground, and when you look again the mass behind the body is made up entirely of dark, twisting roots and attached to the head like hair, extending well beyond the body and insinuating themselves into the ground, along other tree roots, around you and Dave.

As you watch, unable to look away even if you wanted to, the Fae advances, roots creaking and reaching to pull closer to you. Your trappings tighten even more, threatening to cut off blood flow, and the Fae leans in to put a smirking mouthful of jagged knives in your face.

“Well, well,  _ whale _ , two little lost humans, what a  _ treat _ ,” and you can hear the smugness dripping from her every syllable, sickeningly sweet. She draws back, beginning a slow circle around you as you’re helpless to do anything but watch and listen. 

“Lemme guess, you couldn’t re- _ fish _ t anymore and thought you’d be safer if you both came at once?” as she speaks a root snakes up and around your body, stopping at your face to pet condescendingly at your cheek. “I bet you thought you were being smart, hm?”

Her voice lights up, in mock-delight, “I wonder, did you bring me any presents? It’s shella rude, you know, to wash up in someone else’s territory without a proper present.” The roots wrapped around you and Dave begin to move, probing into your pockets and your back until they produce the butter and crystal, dropping them into her outstretched hand.

She inspects the butter pot first, tapping at it with a lethally sharp-looking nail before opening it and dipping a fingertip inside. Instantly you smell something rancid, and when she withdraws you can see a fingerful of butter shot through with brown, green mold sprouting up over it and continuing to spread.

“Gone bad,” she announces sweetly from your left, next to Dave. You watch, frozen, as she leans into his face and touches her claw to his nose, smearing it with the ruined butter. She carefully replaces the lid on the butter pot, and in one sharp  _ crunch _ she tightens her fist, crushing the ceramic like a handful of dried leaves. 

She opens her spindly fingers, dropping the shards to the ground, and raises the crystals to her eye for closer inspection. After a moment, her fingers tighten with a vicious twist and the crystal is crushed in her grasp.

“Hm, broken,” she says, “what a pity, it was a nice little trinket.” 

She turns a threatening razor-mouthed smile at Dave and then turns to you, unabashed delight in her tone. “If you haven’t brought me any suitable gifts, then I guess I’ll have to keep the two of you for myshellf. After all, it’s only polite that you bring me  _ some _ fin useful, and the only thing left to offer is yourselves.”

At this you fight against the block in your brain, struggling to do so much as twitch a finger, anything that could help you escape. You feel your grasp on the nail in your pocket tighten minutely, and in a flash of movement te Fae has encircled you and the force keeping you still redoubles, so strong you can hardly breathe.

From behind she wraps an arm around you in a mockery of a loving embrace- her chin finds is way to rest on your shoulder, her lips at your ear. She dips her hand into your pocket and pries the nail from your grip, then trails the sharpened end of it across your body to your neck, digging in enough to threaten without really breaking the skin. “And what,” she asks, sugar dripping from her tone, “were you planning to do with this, hm? Shorely you weren’t meaning to  _ threaten _ me with this little scrap of metal. It’d reely do more harm to you than to me, I think,” and she digs the point in harder, right over your jugular, a sharp point of pressure and adrenaline. 

Her other arm snakes around your middle, sharpened points of fingernail shredding through your shirt. “Those little trinkets of yours may have worked on the previous court, but I can ashore you, that shit won’t fly here. Now, you better watch your behavior  _ reel _ well in my court, ‘cause if I hear anything at all about you lil shits?” the nail leaves your neck briefly but you don’t dare move, don’t dare hope that the threat is gone, “there’s gonna be  _ issues _ ,” and you can feel sharp stings of cuts, over your stomach and around your neck as she withdraws her arms from around you in a single vicious movement, dragging her claws and the nail across your skin.

You can  _ feel _ it when she leaves you, the cold and haze leaving your mind, roots unwrapping you, knees finally giving out from being locked in place so that you can fall forward. You throw your palms out to catch yourself and take a minute on your hands and knees to catch your breath, breathing hard after hardly being able to.

At your side you can see Dave similarly collapsed and heaving, wiping the rancid butter off his face with his sleeve. 

After a minute, he croaks out, “Rose?”

You take a shaking breath and answer, “yes?”

He takes a few more gulps of air. “We’re fucked.”

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a while, mostly because I had to work this summer and didn't have the energy to be writing a whole lot afterwards. I have a couple weeks to myself now so hopefully I can make some progress. Thank you all so much for encouraging comments and for sticking with the story.


End file.
